Feds Criticized in Fight Against Killer Bat Disease

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Feds Criticized in Fight Against Killer Bat Disease

As an apocalyptic bat disease threatens to spread across the United States, the stage is set for a showdown between the federal government and environmentalists who feel enough isn't being done to stop it.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service released the second draft version on Oct. 27 of its national response plan for White Nose Syndrome, which has killed more than a million cave-dwelling bats since emerging four years ago.

On the same day, the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity issued a press release excoriating the plan, calling it a "slow-motion response" to a disease that's already destroyed a major part of the animal kingdom in the eastern U.S., and shows no sign of slowing.

"You have to pick a model [for response] that's appropriate to the situation," said Mollie Matteson, a conservation advocate at the Centers for Biological Diversity. "I'm afraid this one will be perfected by the time White Nose Syndrome reaches California."

Caused by a fungus that eats bat tissues and wakes them from hibernation too soon, White Nose Syndrome (WNS) has spread to 14 states and two Canadian provinces since the first cases were reported in 2006 in upstate New York. That state and Vermont have lost more than 90 percent of their bats, threatening populations with total extinction or, at best, a centuries-long recovery process.

The discovery in Oklahoma earlier this year of Geomyces destructans, the fungus linked to WNS, raised the nightmare possibility of the disease spreading west as well as south and east, conceivably exterminating most if not all 22 species of cave-dwelling, hibernating U.S. bats in the next few decades. It's more than an animal tragedy: Those bats are major consumers of insects, filling a nighttime ecological niche shared by birds in the daytime. The loss could translate to booms of crop-eating insect pests, causing millions of dollars annually in agricultural damage and increased pesticide use.

Researchers and wildlife managers were caught off-guard by the outbreak, which is unprecedented in known mammal history. A handful of state biologists, federal researchers and conservationists scrambled to respond, tracking the disease and conducting basic research on shoestring budgets. The USFWS has coordinated the effort, and the draft plan represents the next, more mature stage of the fight.

For now, it's largely an organizational document, stating priorities and establishing a framework for coordinating activities among dozens of federal and state agencies involved in a large-scale response. The plan also identifies seven key areas of action, including data sharing, developing reliable diagnostic tools, research on the fungus itself, and investigations of how WNS spreads and might be treated.

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Each action area is universally regarded by white nose researchers and conservationists as important. But there is little specific detail in the plan, now two years in the making, or about how these actions will be pursued or funded. The plan "only provides a conceptual framework for responding to the disease," said the Center for Biological Diversity in its press release. It "makes no concrete recommendations for research and management."

According to Jeremy Coleman, the WNS syndrome coordinator for the Fish and Wildlife Service, such broad outlines had to come before specifics. "It's important to lay out the groundwork," he said. After a 60-day comment period, the draft plan will be revised. When that's finalized next year, a detailed "implementation plan" will follow. "We've been doing all these other pieces that are critical to actual implementation," said Coleman.

"As far as the plan goes, it's fine," said Nina Fascione, executive director of Bat Conservation International, a nonprofit conservation group that worked with the USFWS on developing the draft plan. "It's just not that descriptive." Fascione noted the inherent complexity and slowness of coordinating multiple government agencies, saying the proof of the plan will be in its implementation stage.

But Matteson said the federal effort doesn't reflect the urgency of the disease, comparable in magnitude only to Chytridiomycosis, a disease that's caused die-offs and extinctions in 30 percent of all amphibian species. "They've failed to put the crisis in that light," she said.

The Center for Biological Diversity wants the USFWS to immediately declare a national wildlife emergency, develop a plan for closing caves to people who might pick up the fungus and spread it elsewhere, and dedicate $10 million for WNS funding in the next agency budget.

The USFWS is now spending roughly $2.4 million of its existing $2.87 billion annual budget on White Nose Syndrome research and management. While that $2.87 billion is a relatively small sum with which to manage a vast nation's wildlife – more can easily be spent on a couple local highway projects – $2.4 million per year seems paltry in light of a threat to an entire ecological niche.

In comparison, the USFWS budget request for 2011 notes that improvements to its email system and data centers will save $2.45 million, or slightly more than its dedicated WNS funding.

Additional money has come from Congress, which gave the USFWS $1.9 million for White Nose in 2010. The money has been well spent, providing much-needed assistance to underfunded state wildlife agencies and supporting crucial basic research.

However, that $1.9 million was not included in the belt-tightening 2011 USFWS budget request, submitted to Congress by the Department of the Interior, its parent agency. According to an earlier version of the USFWS budget, "The Service proposes to discontinue this unrequested funding in [Fiscal Year] 2011 in order to fund higher priority conservation activities elsewhere."

To stop the loss, Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), who with Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) has been a vocal Congressional champion of White Nose funding, made a $5 million request in the Department of the Interior's 2011 appropriations bill. That bill was supposed to be passed in September, but the vote was postponed until early December, when Congress will consider a multi-agency bundle of unpassed appropriations bills en masse.

Whether even a fraction of that $5 million will make it through is uncertain. The political climate is unfavorable to so-called "earmarks," even when they're vitally important.

But even if funding is scarce, "it wouldn't cost much to say, 'This is a wildlife emergency. We need all hands on deck. This is a total crisis,'" said Matteson.

Correction: I originally stated that Congress gave $1.4 million to the USFWS in 2008. That was wrong. The only Congressional money has been the $1.9 million voted on in 2009, and allotted for 2010. I also said that USFWS proposed to return $500,000 of it; instead, they proposed to return all of it. Many thanks to Peter Youngbaer of the National Speleological Society for this clarification.